20–16291
“The effect of life upon literature, especially as it concerns the English people, is the problem that Professor Thorndike examines in this book. His survey includes a century as he contrasts the difference of English literature after Waterloo with its character today after the great war. The study of the changes that are the groundwork upon which literature bases its expression is primarily concerned with life. Thus Professor Thorndike in the first four chapters of his book deals with literature—down to Carlyle with a more or less historical sense. His next five chapters shift the whole basis of this historic groundwork with the revolts and evolutions that began to change the aspects of society. Hence Progress and poverty, Democracy and empire, Religion, Woman, and Science, invention and machinery are the subjects discussed. What Professor Thorndike predicts for the future is a reconcilement, a quicker compromise than in the past, between the changing forces of life and the imaginative symbols, which is literature’s interpretation and embodiment of them.”—Boston Transcript
“One always takes up with respect a work by Professor Thorndike, but this book is below his reputation. It is solid and sensible, and presents truly the main facts about the period and its literature. But the ground covered is so wide that little not already known to the student of history or of literature can be told within the small compass of the volume: and the book lacks the unity, lucidity, and brilliancy which could alone make memorable so brief a treatment of so large and complex a subject.” W. C. Bronson
+ − Am Hist R 26:362 Ja ’21 410w
“A careful piece of work that will interest only widely read people who do not need an entrancing style to attract them. No index.”
+ − Booklist 17:107 D ’20 + Boston Transcript p7 O 2 ’20 780w
“Perhaps it is this wealth of illustration which hinders the movement of the thesis: the author is continually led astray into the realms of literary criticism admirable in itself, but not bearing directly enough on the subject under discussion. We must confess to having found the opening chapters dull, academic, a laboring of the obvious.” W. H. B.
+ − Grinnell R 16:333 Ja ’21 400w
“On the political and economic side his conclusions are terrifically unconvincing.” Pierre Loving